Here are 4 preliminary designs for the logo for the artist I've created "Nothing To Lose".
After creating a survey to find out which one my target audience likes the most, I've found that they prefer the bottom left one over all the others. I got some written feedback from other people outside my survey on what they though of the logos, and some of the negative but constructive criticisms summed up and collated were:
"The noose works well with the message the logo is trying to get across, but it doesn't really fit the genre of music, a noose is more closely linked with heavy metal/emo music than the more electonica/electropop genre of the artist. The font used is also quite plain and has no personality, which may create negative connotations towards the artist"
I completely agreed with this point, and I decided to re-design the logo from scratch. Firstly I looked at research I'd done on my typeface research. The first thing I found during my research was an interesting graphic created by noupe, showing the baseline 'mood' evoked by each common type of font
They can often look very informal due to their resemblance to hand written text, but ironically they can also look over formal, due to their cursive, archaic style. This font family has strong connotations to femininity, beauty, expense and also are characterised as delicate and relaxed, but also evoke feelings of nostalgia amongst older readers.
The typeface can also connote youth culture and anarchic ideologies when a 'graffiti' styled font of the typeface is used.
After creating a survey to find out which one my target audience likes the most, I've found that they prefer the bottom left one over all the others. I got some written feedback from other people outside my survey on what they though of the logos, and some of the negative but constructive criticisms summed up and collated were:
"The noose works well with the message the logo is trying to get across, but it doesn't really fit the genre of music, a noose is more closely linked with heavy metal/emo music than the more electonica/electropop genre of the artist. The font used is also quite plain and has no personality, which may create negative connotations towards the artist"
I completely agreed with this point, and I decided to re-design the logo from scratch. Firstly I looked at research I'd done on my typeface research. The first thing I found during my research was an interesting graphic created by noupe, showing the baseline 'mood' evoked by each common type of font
Typeface: Serif
Font Example
Artist Logo Example
Information
Serif type faces are defined by their ‘feet/flags/tags’ (the small flicks at the ends of the letters, e.g. under the top of the T) Serifs are often used to improve the readability of large blocks of text within a magazine, but are sometimes used in titles for effect.
Serifs have a vintage, archaic style, which works well and provides fitting connotations for artists with a more mature audience. The use of Serif fonts isn’t just for these types of artists, for example, Jay Z uses this type of font, and a more stretched up version of it is now a noticeable convention of modern typography.
Serifs have a vintage, archaic style, which works well and provides fitting connotations for artists with a more mature audience. The use of Serif fonts isn’t just for these types of artists, for example, Jay Z uses this type of font, and a more stretched up version of it is now a noticeable convention of modern typography.
Typeface: Sands Serif
Font Example
Artist Logo Example
Information
Sans Serif fonts differ from Serif fonts as they don’t have the flags and tags on the letters. Sans Serif fonts are often used for logos due to their simplicity.
Sans Serif fonts have connotations of informality and youth, and are often used by artists that are trying to promote fresh, modern and popular ideologies, and who’s target audience is younger and ‘cool’.
Typeface: Block/Slab Serif
Font Example
Artist Logo Example
Information
Block/Slab Serif fonts have a mixture of the connotations of Serif and Sans Serif fonts. Most importantly, Block Serif fonts has connotations of popular culture, due to their use in American College logos and large American public institutes’ logos, for example, the New York Police Department.
Typeface: Script
Font Example
Artist Logo Example
Information
‘Script’ typefaces are cursive fonts which are easily identifiable as a fonts that look hand written, but have some conventions of a serif type face. These fonts have connotations of elegance and are appropriate for almost all artists due to their endless opportunities of customisation.
They can often look very informal due to their resemblance to hand written text, but ironically they can also look over formal, due to their cursive, archaic style. This font family has strong connotations to femininity, beauty, expense and also are characterised as delicate and relaxed, but also evoke feelings of nostalgia amongst older readers.
The typeface can also connote youth culture and anarchic ideologies when a 'graffiti' styled font of the typeface is used.
Typeface: Decorative/Display Fonts
Font Example
Artist Logo Example
Information
Decorative/Display fonts are fonts that cannot be defined by any of the other type face categories. Decorative fonts are amazing at evoking multiple connotations and feelings amongst the audience, they can contain imagery of any genre of music, and can vary their formality to suit the artist for which they represent.
The array feelings they evoke is so large it would be impossible to list them all, and by listing a few, others would be contradicted (for example, some decorative fonts can evoke feelings of happiness, while some can evoke feelings of sadness).
Display/Decorative fonts are generally very graphical and detailed. When creating a logo, the Decorative/Display font must be simple, so that it is readable and recognisable when seen from a distance, or when printed small on things like tickets, but not too simple as to be boring.
This typeface is one of the most popular when it comes to band logos:
I then started to re-design my logo, firstly I found many 'mix tapes' online that feature similar music to mine, I found a few logos (examples bellow), and noticed they all had a lot in common, they were all monochromatic, and usually accompanied by a colourful photo behind them. I found a veriety of different fonts were used.
I then went on to created 4 basic logos using 4 different fonts, and chose the one I liked most (top one), and then developed it further.
I chose to use the cursive, italic, "Casual Script" font as it fit with the connotations I wanted my artist to be associated with. Once I was happy with this draft of the artist logo, I went on to creating the final logo, and a time lapse video of me creating it.
I showed the logo to a few people, and explained the genre, style, and context of my artist, and here are a few of their responses
From this feedback I decided to completely change the name of my artist, and subsequently the logo. I decided to change the artists name to "Tame". I chose this for a number of reasons, firstly it was short and memorable, and also it sort of reflected the character in my music video, Tame literally means when someone is to remove an animal's natural instincts and make them behave in a way that they see fit. In my music video my charter's natural instincts are suppressed by social norms, and they act in a way that really isn't instinctive to them.
I didn't know what sort of font to base the logo on, so I explored a few options:
The three fonts above are all 'fixed width' or monospaced fonts, this means that the space taken up by each letter is the exact same. I liked this font as it connoted the uniformity of society and social norms, as a pose to proportional fonts, where each letter is given the amount of space needed, connoting a society where 'everyone fits in'.
This typeface is one of the most popular when it comes to band logos:
I then started to re-design my logo, firstly I found many 'mix tapes' online that feature similar music to mine, I found a few logos (examples bellow), and noticed they all had a lot in common, they were all monochromatic, and usually accompanied by a colourful photo behind them. I found a veriety of different fonts were used.
I then went on to created 4 basic logos using 4 different fonts, and chose the one I liked most (top one), and then developed it further.
I chose to use the cursive, italic, "Casual Script" font as it fit with the connotations I wanted my artist to be associated with. Once I was happy with this draft of the artist logo, I went on to creating the final logo, and a time lapse video of me creating it.
I showed the logo to a few people, and explained the genre, style, and context of my artist, and here are a few of their responses
From this feedback I decided to completely change the name of my artist, and subsequently the logo. I decided to change the artists name to "Tame". I chose this for a number of reasons, firstly it was short and memorable, and also it sort of reflected the character in my music video, Tame literally means when someone is to remove an animal's natural instincts and make them behave in a way that they see fit. In my music video my charter's natural instincts are suppressed by social norms, and they act in a way that really isn't instinctive to them.
I didn't know what sort of font to base the logo on, so I explored a few options:
The three fonts above are all 'fixed width' or monospaced fonts, this means that the space taken up by each letter is the exact same. I liked this font as it connoted the uniformity of society and social norms, as a pose to proportional fonts, where each letter is given the amount of space needed, connoting a society where 'everyone fits in'.
I then looked through a variety of other fonts, but I couldn't find one I liked more than the monospace ones, so I went back and found my favourite one. I then created 6 varieties of the logo and put it into a group chat asking my target audience which one they thought was the most aesthetically pleasing and fit with the context/background of my artist.
Overall the large majority of the people that replied said they preferred logo 3 (60%), followed closely by logo 6 (27%) and finally logo 1 - the unedited font (13%).
I developed the logo a little and ended up with this final piece. Besides the logo looking good and fitting with the genre, there are five hidden signs/meanings within the logo. The Chalice (V) and the Blade (Λ) symbols are in the logo in the A and in between the M, these are the original icons for male and female, and Blade is still used in military uniform today to signify rank, it connotes manhood and aggression. The Chalice, the original icon for female is also present. The use of these two symbols ties in with the gender identity theme of my music video. The line on the A has been removed, this symbolises that the character in the music video isn't fully whole, a part of their personality is missing, and this is because they have to suppress it. And finally the two lines, one above and one below the logo, represent the feeling of entrapment for the character, this is echoed in the music video by there only being one character. Finally the use of monospaced text reflects societies views on binary genders.
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